Chinese tigress kills zookeeper cleaning her cage

BEIJING (Reuters) - A tigress in a small city zoo killed a zookeeper who forgot to remove her from her cage before cleaning it, Xinhua news agency said.

Police shot the tigress dead after discovering the zoo's only tranquillizer gun was also inside the cage.

Zhang, a keeper in his 60s, drove a tiger into an inner cage before entering the outer cage at the zoo in a park in Xinyi, in eastern China's Jiangsu province, colleagues told Xinhua.

But he forgot about the tigress who shared the outer cage.

Police evacuated tourists and park workers after Zhang was mauled on Monday.

China has only about 30 tigers left in the wild but keeps over 5,000 in several commercial breeding farms around the country.

Local zoos are often poorly managed. In May this year, a Thai zookeeper was killed while cleaning a tiger's cage on the island province of Hainan.

In February, a tiger killed a six-year-old girl waiting to have her picture taken with the animal at a zoo in southwest China.

Two months later, crocodiles devoured a 9-year-old child who, along three school friends, had climbed into an enclosure at a holiday park and taunted the reptiles with sticks and catapults.